Next Saturday, June 29, the streets of Madrid will be witness to a picture that does not stop attracting the attention of everyone who comes across it: it is a new edition of the Marcha Ciclonudista, starring people riding naked on their bicycles through the city.
This march is held in different cities around the world under the name World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) and aims to raise awareness about the vulnerable situation in which cyclists find themselves in traffic.
Under the slogan “Naked in front of the traffic” Madrid celebrates this year the twenty-first edition of this march, which will start on Saturday June 29 at 12:30 pm from the Plaza de Cibeles. The Ciclonudista is organized in this occasion by the Pedalibre Association with the support of the Asociación de Amig@s del Nudismo de Madrid (AANUMA).
The route of the XX Cyclone Walk
The march will start from Cibeles at 12:30 pm. The route, on the other hand, is as follows: “we will go through the streets of Alcalá, Alfonso XII, Montalbán (where we will stop to take off our clothes), Paseo del Prado, Cibeles, Alcalá, Gran Vía, Princesa, Bulevares, Génova, Pl. de Colón, Paseo de Recoletos Cibeles, Alcalá, Sol, Mayor, Bailén and Pl. de Oriente where we will conclude the march”.
A march for road safety
This march, which began in Zaragoza in 2001 and has been held in the capital since 2004, claims “a more livable city and balanced, in which the car does not impose its law”, reads a text on the Pedalibre website. Throughout its various editions, the event has been organized by associations such as Bicicrítica Madrid, Bicis Solidarias or AANUMA.
In that first edition of the Ciclonudista in Madrid, about 60 cyclists participated. Juan Gamba, one of the organizers, declared at El Mundo that it was “a symbolic way of showing that the only bodywork available to cyclists in Madrid is their bodies“. According to the media, the beginning of that first march was marked, precisely, by an accident in which a cyclist was injured after being run over.
In addition to calling attention to road violence and the vulnerability to which cyclists are exposed, this initiative aims to to demand measures such as “an cycling network safe and secure”.